*ooodsie*

mejane123

Sent you a PM!

ooodsie

Thanks!   My PM's are acting up and it keeps giving me errors when I try to respond to you    Do you mind sharing how much you ended up spending on the trip minus airfare (we are using FF miles for the air portion).   Did you do it yourself or use a TA?

Sounds like an awesome itinerary - we have a lot more we want to pack into ours, so we're thinking more like 15 days, so that we can get to Paris too.   I'm still nervous about rushing through and not feeling like we had enough time everywhere though, and considering just cutting out France all together and hopefully going back another time to just go to Paris... not sure yet!

mejane123

Yeah, I wish we had the time to do 2 weeks, but it just isn't feasible for us right now.  I guess it all depends on what you want to do.  We aren't beach people, so we're not all that interested in going to the southern part of Italy or Sicily.  But if we were beach people, I'd want the additional 4 or 5 days definitely.  We actually ended up cutting out Venice because there was too much we wanted to pack into the 9 days we'll have there.  That's another 2 days there, considering we'd have to get there, spend the night, do all the touristy stuff, and get to wherever we'd be going next.  

The three tours and hotel costs totalled just under 2K.  In addition, we'll be doing the train passes that will add another $400, and the entrance fees to museums, Pompeii, and other things will probably add another $100 or so, plus the cost of food.  I have no idea how much we need to budget for food, so I'm going to talk to a few people I know that went to Italy recently to get their take.  

We used a TA for the tours and hotels because she was able to get better rates for us all around.  I'd definitely recommend checking into a few different ones to get an idea of what they can offer.  I more or less knew exactly what we wanted to do, so I was able to say "This is what we want, how much is it?"  I researched like crazy before I contacted anyone, so  I knew how much things would cost if I booked myself.  I was able to know without question that we were getting a better deal.  Plus, the added security of having our TA book the tours was nice because I had no clue who was safe to use (there are so many websites out there, I didn't really know which were reputable).  And also, with a TA, we're able to pay for it over time.  We're did a $200 deposit (that was their policy) and the rest will get billed to our credit card later on.  It's a lot easier than having to pay for it all at once, considering the cost of airfare.

Hope this helps!

ooodsie

It does help - thanks so much!   When are you going again?